


lionheart

by dreamweavernyx



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days, Molly finds her eyes straying to that drawer in her desk, the one holding a slim piece of wood and the memories of a life she's left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lionheart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolvesChaseRabbits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolvesChaseRabbits/gifts).



> Significance of a cedar wand can be found [here](http://pottermore.wikia.com/wiki/Cedar).
> 
> Kudos to the great [justjoy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy) for beta-reading, rambly comments, and making sure that I obey the laws of physics.

Molly Hooper is sixteen when she learns that the world is not as rosy as it seems.

 

She’s had it all planned out since third year when she strategically chose Ancient Runes and Arithmancy for her electives: earn decent grades, graduate, get a job working for the Ministry or Gringotts. Then, near the end of her sixth year, comes the Battle of Hogwarts.

 

To be fair, the war _had_ been rather expected, and she _had_ voluntarily put herself in it, joining the Dumbledore’s Army at the behest of her roommate. She spends long nights studying defensive spells and speedy jinxes, even as nervous seventh-years come in and out of the Room of Requirement (where they all hole up) with cuts and bruises on their arms and grim resolution on their faces.

 

But to her war and fighting seem as foreign a concept as dragons in the Forbidden Forest, and she expects to fire off some spells, run from some Death Eaters, and then watch Harry Potter save the day.

 

Only- he doesn’t.

 

She watches with the rest of the Army as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named walks into Hogwarts, behind him the hulking figure of Hagrid clutching a limp body, and the desperate shriek from Ginny Weasley is enough to tell who it is.

 

The leader of their Army slays a snake, Molly thinks she might have seen Harry Potter’s corpse _move_ , and then suddenly the world explodes into chaos.

 

Dimly, Molly remembers two first-year girls who’ve been almost like her little sisters through the year - she hadn’t seen outside the castle, and she realizes with dread that they may still be hiding somewhere inside. She ducks back into the corridors of Hogwarts half-filled with rubble, running for the common room and occasionally throwing a glance or two behind her. Still, the Death Eater who suddenly appears in front of her is wholly unexpected, and in her shock she stumbles and falls, only remembering to grab her wand off where it had fallen on the floor in the nick of time.

 

_Protego_ , she gasps, scrambling to get to her feet, just as her opponent shoots off a Cruciatus Curse at her. He readies his wand again, but Molly doesn’t wait to see what spell it is, only hisses a quick _Locomotor Mortis_ before escaping again.

 

Behind her, she hears the Death Eater mutter something that sounds like _that bitch_ , and his distant cackle is the only warning she gets before there’s another Stunner flying past her, singeing a couple of strands of hair.

 

Molly can only concentrate on running faster, stumbling over debris and wishing desperately she were a little more fit. She risks a glance over a shoulder and bites back a scream when she realizes that the Death Eater has undone her curse and caught up.

 

And then, the world jerks around her as she trips over a large chunk of castle wall, and even as she spins around, mind going blank while she scrabbles for her wand, the Death Eater already has some spell on the tip of his tongue, some sickly purple light illuminating the tip of his wand.

 

Suddenly, a strangled cry rings out, and _someone_ jumps the Death Eater from his right, the momentum sending both of them plummeting sideways, and out of the second-floor window to the ground below.

 

Timidly, still wobbly from a mix of fear and adrenaline, Molly peers out of the window, and sees a bundle of unmoving robes.

 

Both the Death Eater and her unknown savior are dead.

 

~

 

She learns, much later on when the fighting has stopped, that her savior is a seventh-year Gryffindor named Lavender Brown. (She finds this out when she levitates the limp body back to the Great Hall, and a slim Indian girl cries out _Lavender!_ and sinks to her knees in grief.)

 

The Hall eventually fills with both haggard survivors and broken casualties. They’ve won the war, Molly hears.

 

( _But at a great cost_ , she murmurs to herself absently, studying the various expressions of grief and sorrow painted across the faces of the victors.)

 

Her eyes stray unconsciously to Lavender again, and overwhelming guilt rises up in her throat, bitter and vile.

 

( _If only I-_ )

 

Quietly, Molly slinks out of the Great Hall, looking for somewhere free of the heavy atmosphere, where she can sit and think.

 

Her feet bring her to her common room, high above the ground in Ravenclaw Tower. Slowly, she pushes a window open, refusing to flinch as the icy wind blows up and stings her eyes.

 

_What am I good for,_ she mutters to the swirling snow outside. _All I could do was magic, and even then I couldn’t do anything when it counted_.

 

Parvati Patil’s gaze when she’d explained Lavender’s death sears itself in her mind, all confusion and deep sorrow and a flash of accusation that she was too slow to hide.

 

Molly leans out the windowsill, cranes her neck and eyes the snowy ground below.

 

In the muggle fairytales she’d grown up reading, the hero would always fall into a slump, and then recover again by sheer strength of will, no matter how many people did not believe in him while he was down. And Harry Potter served as living proof that such heroes existed outside the realm of sheer fancy. Be it guilt or crippling sorrow, he’d always come out of it stronger than ever.

 

_But_ , Molly muses, _my will isn’t that strong._

 

She tilts forward a little, letting her center of gravity shift, and-

 

~

 

When she comes to, it’s still snowing, and her robes are full of the powdery white stuff.

 

_I’m not dead,_ she croaks, and tries to sit up.

 

Slender fingers grip her arm and help her up, and Molly finds herself blinking at the silver-gray eyes of her roommate, Luna Lovegood.

 

_You’re not dead_ , Luna confirms, but the underlying sadness in her eyes suggests that this isn’t the full truth.

 

_Why_ , Molly asks.

 

Luna gives her a searching look, but does not reply, only hauls Molly to her feet, drapes an extra coat around her shivering shoulders, and helps her limp back into the warm castle. Instead of the Hospital Wing, though, Luna brings her to an empty classroom.

 

_Your body did not die,_ Luna says seriously, no trace of the usual wonderment in her face when she talks about Nargles and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. _Your magic saved you._

 

Molly remains silent as Luna tells her about wizard suicide, about how her magic had been spent in its entirety in exchange for her life.

 

_When someone chooses to kill himself,_ says Luna, _he is choosing to sacrifice what he holds most dear. For Muggles, it is their life, but for us, it’s our magic._

_So I have no more magic?_ murmurs Molly, pulling out her wand and twirling it speculatively. _I’m a Muggle now?_

_A Squib_ , Luna corrects. _Wizards who commit suicide become Squibs for the rest of their lives. Some say if you prove your resolution to your magic it’ll return, but I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. I’m sorry._

 

Her words carry a sense of finality, and Molly eyes the tip of her wand, trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’ll never be able to produce even the faintest spark from its tip again.

 

(For something that she’s only known herself to have for a little over six years of her life, Molly is strangely unsurprised to find that the loss of her magic comes with a deep ache that she knows won’t fade any time soon – the one thing that made her different, and now she doesn’t even have that.)

 

She tries anyway, swishes it and murmurs _Lumos_ , but nothing happens.

 

Trying hard not to let her lower lip quiver, she stows the wand back into her pocket, pretending not to see Luna’s pitying gaze from across the desk.

 

~

 

Molly doesn’t tell anyone else about her lack of magic, and spends what little is left of the term planning. There are no more lessons, and next year they’ll be repeating their past year of studies, in light of the disrupted academic year.

 

She knows she can’t stay, so she tells Professor McGonagall (who’s now Acting Headmistress) some fabricated story about family issues, saying that she’ll study on her own, and makes sure to pepper it with enough crocodile tears to soften the stern lady.

 

Somehow, she manages to get away with it, unnoticed among the veritable horde of Muggleborns being withdrawn by parents horrified at learning that their children had fought a war and survived. (Molly doesn’t blame them in the slightest.)

 

It’s not a complete lie – she _is_ planning to self-study, but more along the lines of Muggle subjects rather than Charms and Transfiguration. She’s still determined to learn Potions, which doesn’t technically require her magic, but she can’t survive in the wizarding world with mere knowledge of Potions and the magical capacity of a Squib. But Molly Hooper is not a Muggleborn Ravenclaw for nothing, and she knows she can probably blend back into the Muggle world if she studies enough to qualify for a decent job.

 

_And studying_ , she tells Luna, who’s the only one who knows of Molly’s actual plan, _is the only thing I’m good for._

 

Luna gives her a strange look and shoots her a wry half-smile.

 

_You’re worth more than that_ , she says cryptically. _One day, you’ll see._

 

~

 

Molly spends the next few years furiously studying. She converts most of her Gringotts vault into Muggle money and slowly spends it on used textbooks, reading and absorbing in between the waitressing shifts she takes up to keep a roof over her head.

 

Through Luna, she obtains a short list of Muggle universities that Hogwarts students usually go to if they wish to go back to a Muggle life. It’s a list that’s usually obtained from the Muggle Studies professor, but because the new professor’s only been teaching for a short while she doesn’t have the complete list. Instead, Luna tells her, the list comes from Madam Pince, who’d shot Luna a suspicious look but had scribbled down all the names on parchment anyway.

 

Molly eyes the list, and surreptitiously crosses each university’s name off her own list of universities to apply to.

 

Perhaps it’s because she’s always had a special interest in medical spells, or because the Ravenclaw in her loves an academic challenge, but she sets her sights on a medical degree. It’s not as hard as she thinks – she _does_ have a decent foundation from Muggle primary school before she’d gone to Hogwarts, and the long summers spent reading in the library because she’d finished all her essays in the first week.

 

She gets into university three years behind her classmates, but doesn’t let it bother her much. Instead, she buries herself in course texts, a much-ingrained habit after the past few years of her life spent doing nothing but studying.

 

Her classmates ask her out to parties and drinking sessions, but Molly always awkwardly declines, and eventually they slap the label of ‘socially awkward’ on her and stop asking.

 

Molly doesn’t mind. Luna still sends the occasional owl, asking about her wellbeing and keeping her up to date on the wizarding world and her ongoing hunt for the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. (It’s times like these Molly’s a little glad she’s not very social, if only because letting Muggle friends catch sight of an owl swooping in through her window with a roll of parchment tied to its leg would raise a ton of awkward questions.)

 

Beyond Luna’s letters, though, the only contact she gets with the wizarding world is when she slips into the Diagon Alley apothecary to purchase ingredients. She doesn’t talk to anyone, always declines Tom’s offer of a glass of Butterbeer before she leaves his pub.

 

Hidden in her room drawer sits her wand, never used except for gaining access to Diagon Alley (the only thing she can do with her current magical capacity), a stark reminder of the past she’s left behind.

 

~

 

At age thirty-one, she trades in her physician job for one in the morgue at Barts.

 

Her old classmates titter whenever they have meetups. _Isn’t it just dreary, to be surrounded by dead bodies all day?_ they ask.

 

Truthfully, Molly doesn’t mind the peace and quiet. She’s never been a people person, and five years of diagnosing living people and trying to connect with them so they don’t freak out over her work desk has been tiring for her, so she figures trying to work with dead people should probably be a little less exhausting.

 

(And corpses have the decency not to serve as constant jarring reminders of how she doesn’t really fit in, not even here in the Muggle world. The dead do not talk, after all, much less swish wands about – and at least if some nutjob wizard tries to steal bodies for Inferi she’ll be more than able to recognize the signs.)

 

As she’d expected, working with cadavers is a lot less stressful than with anxious people, but the job’s far from sedentary. A man named Sherlock takes to popping by ever so often, examining her cadavers and sometimes doing fairly dubious things to them that Molly’d personally rather not know about. He’s an interesting man, with an intellect sharper than his high cheekbones, and reminds Molly so painfully of her fellow Ravenclaw yearmates back in the day, always able to see through people with one blink of an inquisitive eye.

 

(His name is already strange enough to be a wizard’s, anyway, except that Molly doesn’t remember any pureblood family named Holmes, and he’s probably far too eccentric even by Wizarding standards.)

 

She takes special care to keep appearances up when he’s around, tries hard not to show the mind she’s honed through the years, lest she gain too much of his attention – because if there’s one person she’d wager on being able to dig up her entire messy past it would definitely be him, Statute of Secrecy or not.

 

But Sherlock is a truly intriguing character, and the cases he brings in grow ever odder. Dirty trainers, a naked woman, _linseed oil_. Molly doesn’t know how he finds his cases or how he solves them, but she’s never seen one that has stumped him yet.

 

Until one day in wintry November, when he meets her at the entrance to Barts with a sample of blood and asks for _her_ help to analyse it.

 

_The man is dead, but I can’t find his cause of death,_ Sherlock says frustratedly. _No injuries, no trace of poison, no health problems. Nothing._

_Perhaps he died in his sleep?_ Molly suggests as she follows him to the morgue, but the words die in her mouth when she sees the corpse.

 

She knows what Sherlock will say seconds before he utters the words bitingly.

 

_With such a look of terror etched on his face, Molly, I highly doubt he was peacefully asleep when he died._

 

~

 

That night, Molly goes home to find an owl at her desk and a letter from Luna, informing her about a recent spate of Muggle killings. The culprit is yet unknown, she writes, but there seems to be no clear motive.

 

The scene of the crime is always the same: an _Alohomora_ for the door, and then _Avada Kedavra._ No incriminating evidence for Muggle police to find.

 

And it is exactly the same scenario Sherlock had described to her in the morning.

 

Molly pushes down the sudden spike of worry, and hopes fervently that Sherlock doesn’t go after the mystery murderer.

 

~

 

Except, of course, he does, in typical Sherlock fashion – actually, the killer could hardly have planned a better lure for Sherlock if he’d tried, what with the apparent insolvability of the crime and near-complete lack of clues.

 

By the fifth murder, Sherlock has figured out some sort of pattern to the killer’s movements, and has planned a stakeout at where he thinks the sixth murder will be.

 

Molly badgers John Watson into telling her where they’re planning to go, and he gives in, unwilling to endure her incessant questioning.

 

_Be careful_ , she says, because she knows that if Sherlock’s on a case, nothing can stop him, least of all her. _He’s dangerous – you still have no idea how he’s killing his victims, or how he even gets into the houses._

 

(Not a lie at all, of course, which doesn’t make it any easier to say.)

_I know,_ John says, but something in her eyes must have told him a little of the worry she feels for the two of them, because he snaps his jaw shut and nods grimly.

 

_I’ll take care of Sherlock,_ he promises her, patting a bulge in his jacket pocket that she suspects is a gun. _So don’t worry._

~

 

But worry she does, and when she gets to her flat the first thing she does is scribble a hasty message to Luna, asking her to send proper wizard help. She’s never known Sherlock to be wrong, and if they are facing a wizard she knows they will not be able to survive the ordeal alone.

 

She bids the owl to fly to Luna with great urgency, then looks around her apartment. For the first time, she finds herself wishing she had a gun of her own. She knows that wands cannot stop a bullet, and if she’s planning to go after the two of them – _her boys_ , she thinks, because ever since they’d involved her in their cases they’ve become part of her life – a gun would have been highly appreciated.

 

Instead, she has to make do with two of her sharpest kitchen knives, which she shoves, sheath and all, into her lab coat pocket. She hesitates for a moment, then yanks open her desk drawer as well, and slips her wand into her pocket.

 

It won’t help much, but somehow, she feels a lot safer with its familiar weight against her leg.

 

~

 

When she gets to the house, the door is wide open, and she can see a woman lying dead in the hallway. Cautiously, she enters the house, flinching a little as she steps around the limp body, and follows the sound of faint murmurs.

 

John is lying limp at the doorway of the living room, and she tries hard to bite back a scream when she sees his body. Slowly, she crouches down and tries to feel for his pulse, breathing a sigh of relief when she feels it, dogged and slow but _there_.

 

She’s hidden in the shadow of the hallway so the man in the room doesn’t see her, but she sees his face, twisted and angry with a scar running down his cheek. His wand is raised, and she bites down on her lip, hard, to stop a scream from escaping, because it’s _Sherlock_ who the man is levitating, struggling for a foothold and gasping for air.

 

She knows the man doesn’t know she’s there, but Molly flinches back anyway when he swishes his wand and does something that makes a grimace flash across Sherlock’s face. She shrinks even further back into the shadows, trying to figure out what to do when all she’s got is a wand she can’t use and John’s limp body-

 

She blinks.

 

_John’s jacket_ , she nearly says out loud in relief, and cautiously starts patting down the outside of his windbreaker, trying to find the gun she’s pretty sure he’d brought along. (Some habits die hard, as the wand in her own pocket reminds her.)

 

Molly’s never shot a gun before, but she used to be pretty accurate with her spells and she’s sure aiming a gun should vaguely lie along the same principles. She hoists the (admittedly rather heavy) gun up with both hands, a finger on the trigger, and aims it at the man’s back.

 

_Crack._

 

The man howls as the bullet enters his shoulder – she’d been aiming for an area vaguely near his heart, but the recoil had caused her arm to jerk – and Sherlock is dropped to the floor, gasping, while his tormenter also collapses.

 

Sherlock’s eyes find hers in the half-shadowed doorway and his eyes widen almost imperceptibly, taking in the gun in her shaking hands and her look that’s half grim resolve and half near-hysteria.

 

Sparing the howling man on the floor another glance, Molly tightens her grip on the gun and darts into the room.

 

_Sherlock_ , she hisses, _can you walk?_

 

He responds in a grunt and staggers to his feet, but she can see the spasms running down his limbs that he can’t quite hide. _An aftereffect of prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse,_ Molly thinks, and feels a little more hate for Sherlock’s tormenter seep into her heart.

 

She reaches out and grabs one of Sherlock’s hands with her own, tries to lead him out of the room, but he stumbles a little, like a shaken baby deer.

 

_Molly_ , he says confusedly, _what was that stick?_

_Later, Sherlock,_ she replies, in what she hopes is a soothing voice. (Call it an occupational hazard, but she’s not done this sort of comforting thing for too long.) _Let’s get you and John out of here first._

 

_He hit John with some sort of red light,_ mutters Sherlock, and it’s painfully obvious how much effort it takes to string those thoughts together and enunciate them in a semi-garbled mess. _Maybe a laser? But not quite…_

 

_Later,_ Molly reiterates, a little more firm, but a curious Sherlock is an unstoppable Sherlock, even when slightly delirious.

 

_He called me a Muggle_ , Sherlock barrels on, half-dazedly. _Is that some kind of insult-_

The low growl of _you bitch_ registers in her mind a little too late, and a jet of bright red light hits Sherlock in the back of his head, knocking him out instantly.

 

Molly tries to gently lower Sherlock to the floor (in her haste, it probably wasn’t as gentle as she’d hoped), and whirls around to see the man standing, face twisted in a mixture of hate and rage, and she fumbles to bring the gun in her hand up to shoot again. Her hand quakes, and the bullet is shot far too low, entering his lower leg.

 

_You didn't kill them_ , she murmurs. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows she should be trying to stop the man, but she is slightly curious as to why her boys had (thankfully) not met the same fate as the occupants of the house.

 

(Also, asking questions is a good delay tactic, and Molly’s stalling in hopes that someone else – preferably magical – will come by anytime now and deliver the kill shot, because killing is something she’s highly reluctant to do.)

 

_They’re interfering Muggles_ , growls the man, spittle flying from his mouth as he struggles to his feet, favouring his left leg now. _Why kill them so easily when I can have a little fun of my own?_

Molly raises the gun again, but he barks a quick _Expelliarmus_ and the gun flies out of her hands, skidding down the polished wood floor of the hallway. Molly glances back for a second, panic rising in her, and she wonders desperately if Luna had received her owl at all.

 

_Shall I torture you too, Muggle?_ he asks, a crazed light entering his eyes, and her hand involuntarily twitches toward her wand, an instinct she has yet to outgrow. _Shall I make you scream in pain?_

 

She slips her hand into her pocket, fingers curling around the smooth cedar of her wand. She knows she would probably stand a better chance if she threw the knives in her other pocket, but if the man can make them fly back at her that’s no chance at all, so she grips the wand she has not used in years and hopes for a miracle.

 

_No, no,_ the man says, as though he’s talking more to himself now. _Women are fragile, not fun to play with at all. I’ll just kill you._

( _You never learn, do you, Molly Hooper? Except this time, there isn’t anyone to save you. Now more people are going to die, and it’s all your fault. Again,_ whispers a taunting voice from the far corners of her mind, and she fights it desperately, shoves back the phantom howl of wind against her face that accompanies the memory of black robes motionless on the snow – but there’s no denying any of it. The only person in the room who might know better than Sherlock Holmes how to kill a man with a bullet, and she... _no_. She won’t fail them. She can’t. Not them, not this time.)

 

Molly casts one last glance down at her feet, where both her boys are out cold, at least one tortured at the hands of this man, and feels the rage bubbling in her heart spread throughout her body, as though her blood had become Fiendfyre burning through her veins.

 

_I am no Muggle_ , she says defiantly in a rare show of bravado, and yanks the wand from her pocket just as he fires the Killing Curse straight at her.

 

There’s no time for her to think of anything to stop the curse, but some instinct urges her to push the burning feeling down her wand arm and into her wand, and something golden shoots out of it, consuming the green spell and flying at her adversary, incandescent and resolute.

 

Molly has bare seconds to process the surprising fact that something actually had come out of her wand, that she’s not dead, before the man’s wand splinters and he collapses, bleeding sluggishly out from both his gunshot wounds.

 

~

 

The wizards do arrive, eventually, a frantic Luna leading them into the open house.

 

_They didn't want to follow a sketchy lead,_ she grouses to Molly later in an uncharacteristic outburst of sullenness. _But Harry was around and he agreed to lead an expedition._

 

_That’s good,_ Molly returns, gaze darting to where Sherlock and John are waiting, still unconscious, to be Obliviated. (They’d almost wanted to Obliviate her too, if not for Luna half-yelling that Molly was as much a witch as any of them. The cedar wand gripped tightly in Molly’s hand was gestured at, and the Aurors dropped the matter.)

 

_What happened, anyway?_ Luna asks, watching as one of the witches (a Healer, probably) crouches down and confirms that the killer isn’t dead, just unconscious.

 

Molly tries to explain everything that had happened, the mysterious golden spell shooting out of her wand with no command whatsoever, but trips over her words and falls silent.

 

_Magic works in mysterious ways,_ Luna says after a pause. _Maybe yours came back?_

 

They both recall Luna’s words from years ago in the dusty classroom, and Molly eyes the wand in her hand speculatively.

 

_Lumos_ , she whispers, discreetly shifting her wand so the tip is blocked mostly from view by Luna, herself, and the wall. For a moment, she is transported back to that dusty classroom, staring fearfully at the tip of her wand, but then a tiny, flickering light sputters to life for a brief five seconds and dies again.

 

_Maybe_ , Molly says, feeling hope enter her heart for the first time in years. _Maybe._

 

~

 

Luna asks Molly to come back to the wizarding world with her – she’s running the Quibbler by herself and would love any help she can get. Molly looks at the delegation of grim Aurors in flowing robes, waiting by a gateway back to a world she’s loath to admit she misses terribly, and wavers.

 

_I think I’ll stay_ , she says eventually, hesitantly, because she doesn’t know if something like this will happen to her boys again, and she’s grown too attached now to let go.

 

Luna reads some of her true intentions in her eyes and smiles serenely at her.

 

_You see_ , she says gently, _you’ve found where you belong, haven’t you?_

 

~

 

Sherlock shoots her the occasional glance now and then, as though he’s forgotten something and looking at her will help him remember. His fingers still twitch occasionally, though he’s not too sure why, and Molly doesn’t tell him.

 

John gives her a strange look when she asks him how to shoot a gun properly. She tells him it’s just in case, but they both know he can tell she’s not telling the full truth.

 

(He lets it go, anyway.)

 

Luna still sends the occasional owl, and Molly no longer feels so alone when she wanders the streets of Diagon Alley. She still can’t do proper magic, but it’s improving slowly, week by week, and the day the matchstick on her desk turns vaguely silver and pointy is the happiest day of her year.

 

_Don’t you miss magic?_ one of her old dorm-mates asks at an impromptu reunion. _Living among Muggles must be dreadful._

 

Molly only quirks a half-smile, thinks back to the adventures that her boys now drag her along for, and sips at her glass of frothy Butterbeer.

 

_It’s alright,_ she says. _Somehow, I think I fit in just fine._

_fin._


End file.
